News Hack 2013
Matt Shearer
Innovation Manager
Hi, Iβm Matt Shearer, Innovation Manager for ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs.
On Thursday & Friday last week (17th & 18th October 2013) we held the , a βHackathonβ format event in Shoreditch Town Hall, London.
This was a ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Connected Studios powered event as part of theΒ programme.
The event saw 150 people, participating in teams, from these organisations:
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, The Times, Financial Times, Independent, LondonLive, The Guardian, The Mirror, SKY News., Mozilla, Dennis Publishing, Lancaster University, University College London, Sheffield University, Swansea University, Newcastle University, Dundee University, plus some individual R&D participants.
At #newsHACK
These teams completed 26 hacks (prototypes), and there were winners in 7 categories, judged by an independent panel.
The Winners:
1) Best in Show Award
Presented by (Head of News & Weather Products, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ)
Awarded to: The Perspectivator (Financial Times).
2) Best Live & Breaking News Experience
Presented by Nic Newman (Independent Strategist, Trainer, and Product Tank Lead)
Awarded to: βConnected Storylinesβ by The Grads (ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ)
3) Best University Hack
Presented by Christina Scott (CIO, FT)
Awarded to: βNews Dropβ by Culture Labs (Newcastle University).
4) Best Visual News Experience that Scales
Presented by Jon Paolo (Head of Editorial at SKY NEWS ONLINE)
Awarded to: βStorylineβ by The LatLongs (ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Location Services)
5) Best Hack that's likely to never be launched
Presented by Peter Rippon (Editor of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Online Archive)
Awarded to: βRubix Newsβ by β3 mins 16 secsβ (The Mirror).
6) Hack that surprised us most
Presented by Anthony Sullivan (Head of Product, The Guardian)
Awarded to: βTalk Newsβ by SKY News team (SKY)
7) Best Journalism Tool
Presented by Jon Paolo
Awarded to: βWestminster Watchdogβ by The Times (Times Digital)
First team seen all wearing #newsHACK t-shirts
Links to these hacks (for as many as is possible), plus videos from the event will be published onΒ (see bottom of post) in coming weeks.
In Summary
We will be publishing more detail on key areas of the event and next steps in coming weeks, and until then here are some key points in brief.
There was a broad and interesting spectrum of βHacksβ:
The βHacksβ, or βprototypesβ, ranged from βTalk Newsβ a natural language speech-driven news reading prototype (from SKY team), through 2nd screen and Journalist research tools (Sheffield, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ et al), Social gamification apps (The Times) and novel CMS approaches (ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ), right through to βRubix Newsβ (Mirror) an innovative navigation paradigm and the βPerspectivatorβ (FT) to help numbers make sense to news audiences.
The format was Rapid Prototyping with Multidiscipline teams:
We saw some great rapid iterations on ideas with small, multidiscipline teams. Each team had a chance to test their ideas in audience testing on the Thursday afternoon to get some real insight. Another key element was that teams used real data sources, rather than mocked up data.
Collaboration across the News Industry:
The teams were from a broad range of News Orgs, and while they were competing for the awards, there was a great deal of collaboration, sharing and discussion between the teams from all organisations.
Great feedback for ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ R&D APIs
80% of the participating teams used the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ β APIs which we had prepared for the event, featuring 100s of thousands of linked data -tagged News content items including, real time new News content. We are taking feedback for how to improve these APIs for future News Industry R&D activities, and for future innovation events.
Linked Data innovation:
Of the teams that used the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Juicer APIs, about half used the brand new βStorylineβ APIs. Their feedback is already giving us some clear next steps on the Storyline iteration, both editorially and technologically, which will help improve the utility of the open model βStorylineβ.
News industry partnerships:
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs are following up with the participating News organisations and Universities on how we can innovate further, together, with open technology and News data exploration.
An Exciting spread of Engineering:
As well as lots of software engineering taking place, we also had teams working on physical kit that they brought into #newsHACK with them; servers, handsets, and an interesting array of LEDs, sensors, projectors and more!
This is our Open Innovation Blueprint:
We believe that when you form a multidiscipline team* in a creative environment, give them problems to solve, provide audience testing & data science support, then you will be making the best use of the teamβs talents. Do this with 30 teams at once, taken from across the industry and academia, then we have a real innovation hot house; collaboration, sharing, problem-solving, innovation, and all of this at an incredible pace - the savings on lagtime between disciplines, and on time invested in untested/erroneous ideas alone is massive - try quickly, build with real data, then fail or succeed quickly.
Promoting and driving this kind of open innovation is how ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Connected Studios powers and supports the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs programme.
If you want to find out more about these projects as they develop please follow ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs on the following channels:
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs on
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs on
* A βMulti-discipline teamβ in this scenario should cover these capabilities: Editorial/Journalist, developer, product design, design, BA, data modelling/architecture. We were recommending teams of 3-5, but up to 7 seems OK.
Matt Shearer is Innovation Manager, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs